Daily Edition

OTOY Bringing 'Batman' VR Experience to View-Master

The VR experience of 'Batman: The Animated Series' will be available this fall.

A new partnership between Mattel and virtual reality company OTOY is likely to evoke childhood nostalgia from several generations.

The companies have struck a deal that will see OTOY distribute episodic content on Mattel's View-Master VR viewer, starting with an immersive experience based on 1990s kids series Batman: The Animated Series.

OTOY announced a collaboration with Warner Bros. and its digital studio Blue Ribbon Content for the Batman project in late 2014 and gave fans a preview of the experience at Comic-Con earlier this year. The VR project adheres closely to the style of the original Batman animated series, which ran for 85 episodes between 1992 and 1995, but renders the experience in an immersive, 360-degree setting.

Batman will be available on the View-Master this fall as part of Mattel's reinvention of the 77-year-old product, which relaunched last year as a VR headset.

"OTOY is the perfect partner to create new VR content for View-Master," said Mark Morse, director of advanced concepts at Mattel. "They're light-years ahead of the curve when it comes to their rendering capabilities. The Batman experience we previewed at San Diego Comic-Con was just a glimpse into the incredible things to come from this collaboration."

OTOY, which has received backing from HBO and Discovery, developed a end-to-end toolset and publishing platform for Mattel and Warner Bros. to bring its Batman experience to life. "The creative energy I put into OTOY goes all the way back to my childhood," said founder and CEO Jules Urbach. "Both Batman: The Animated Series and View-Master were fixtures during that part of my life. It's a dream come true for me to have the chance to bring them together with Mattel and Warner Bros. Consumer Products and participate in the View-Master's evolution to VR and beyond."

Original Batman: The Animated Series co-creator Bruce Timm and writer Paul Dini worked with OTOY on the VR experience, and the original voice cast — including Kevin Conroy (Batman), Mark Hamill (Joker), Loren Lester (Robin) and Tara Strong (Batgirl) — reprised their roles.

"We're thrilled to partner with Mattel and OTOY on this exciting collaboration with Warner Bros. Animation that will give Batman fans around the world a chance to watch the stories and adventures of their favorite superhero in this all-new format," added Kelly Gilmore, senior vp global toys for Warner Bros. Consumer Products.